Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Muslim Immigration and How to Handle It

The political history of
Muslim states has often been restricted to two options. They have either
been ruled by nationalist ("secular") oppressive regimes, or Islamist
oppressive regimes. Unfortunately, many people in Middle East have so
much affinity for political Islam that they do not realize that
political Islam is the root cause of their problems. That attitude is
the main reason they cannot get rid of their backward and violent
regimes, or make cultural or scientific progress.

Sadly, the founder of Islam did not leave behind a humanitarian
message to respect people of other faiths and to be on an equal footing
with them. What the the Islamic State (ISIS) and other barbaric Islamist
groups have been doing to people is horrific beyond words; but it is
meticulously based on Islamic scriptures. So it is not the West causing
these human tragedies; it is Islam and Muslims.

Members of a culture that murders intellectuals who try to
present ideas to improve their societies do not have the moral right to
blame its backwardness and bloodthirsty culture on the West.

Muslims should not try to turn Europe, which is being so generous
to them, into more Muslim lands. We already have far too much
barbarity, misogyny and persecution in the Muslim world. Muslims could
do our people an enormous service if instead they tried harder to turn
the Muslim lands into Europe-like places.

The Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders has suggested that people
who have a passport from an Islamic country, in addition to a Dutch
passport, should sign an anti-Sharia declaration. It should state that
they do not want to introduce Sharia (Islamic law) into the Netherlands,
and that they repudiate all the violent passages in the Koran. New
refugee-candidates might also sign such a declaration. If they support
Islamic rule, then Europe is probably not the best place for them.

These stipulations are not "discrimination against Muslims," any
more than requiring guests to your home to behave politely is
discrimination against friends. This is merely the same way that rulers
in the Middle East -- the Saudis, and Emiratis, for example -- regard
foreigners and visitors. The proposal is a rational and legitimate way
to protect European civilization and the lives and liberties of all of
its citizens.

Europe needs to protect itself and its liberties
unapologetically. Why should Europe be expected to commit suicide and
turn into yet another Muslim land where lives and liberties have no
value? The ancestors of Europeans paid an extremely high price over many
years to give their descendants what they have today. European
governments need to protect the security of their citizens as well as
their cultural identity and freedoms.

The West should support Kurdistan in its struggle for
independence. Such support would be one of the most important steps not
only to liberate a progressive and heroic nation but also to help reduce
the refugee tragedy in the region.

The heartbreaking photos of Muslim refugees trying to reach Europe
have intensified a controversial and urgent issue: The issue of Muslim
immigration and how the world should handle it.

"There are 20 million refugees waiting at the doorstep of Europe," said Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations.

Many claim that Europe, facing the crisis produced by the huge influx
of Muslim migrants and refugees fleeing mainly Syria and Iraq, should
open its doors. But given the realities in Europe and the Muslim world,
this suggestion may well be harmful to both the West and to the Muslim
world.

One of the most common arguments is that Europe is not doing enough
for the Muslim refugees and is actually responsible for the turmoil in
Syria as well as the rest of the Muslim world.

The current wars in the Middle East, however, are not the fault of
the West. Obviously, the Obama administration and European governments
must do more to stop the bloodbath in the Muslim world, but to say that
the wars in the region are the product of Western intervention or some
other Western "plots" just shows how clueless and ignorant the people
who make such claims are about the history of Islam.

Islamic scriptures call on Muslims to wage war
on other religions to bring them under submission to Islam. Muhammad,
the founder of Islam, said that he was "ordered by Allah to fight men
until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is
his messenger."

In Mecca, Muhammad advocated "la iqra fiddin" -- "[there
should be] no compulsion in religion." But when his gift of Islam was
not readily accepted, he began to dismiss peaceful co-existence, his
message became increasingly intolerant and he resorted to militancy.
When Muhammad moved to Medina, after a more benign life in Mecca,
Islam was turned into a military force that apparently intended to rule
all aspects of society, including practices such as sex slavery, child
marriages, forced conversions, wife beating and commands to kill "the
unbelievers." Especially in the later parts of the Quran, Mohammad fully
encourages violence against non-Muslims, and their eternal damnation.

Sadly, the founder of Islam did not leave behind a humanitarian
message to respect people of other faiths and to be on equal footing
with them. By the time Muhammad lived in Medina, his new religion openly
advocated dominating others through subjugation, rape, murder and
forced conversion. People who followed his teachings first became
violent toward peaceful communities and then toward other people around.

When Muhammad failed to leave a clear successor, the omission quickly
turned out to provoke violence. For the first few years after his
death, members of his own family went to war with each other. In a
battle between Aisha, one of Muhammad's several wives, and Ali, his
adopted son, thousands of Muslims were killed fighting to the death. So
anyone who knows about the history of Islam should not be shocked by the
current Muslim-on-Muslim violence.

The actual target of Muslim armies, however, has usually been
non-Muslims, and people across North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and
Asia have been exposed to Islamic violence for the last 1,400 years.
Regrettably, the violent, repressive and intolerant practices of Islam
--against non-Muslims, women and even different sects of Islam -- still
runs wild in the Muslim world, and the deep schism continues to this day
as the Sunni-Shia conflict.

The latest extension of this tradition of violence has mainly
occurred in Syria and Iraq. What the Islamic State (ISIS) and other
barbaric Islamist groups have been doing to people is horrific beyond
words; but it is meticulously based on Islamic scriptures. It is not the
West causing these human tragedies; it is Islam and Muslims.

Unfortunately, many people in Middle East have so much affinity for
political Islam that they do not realize that political Islam is the
root cause of their problems. This oversight is probably the main reason
they cannot get rid of their backward and violent regimes, or make
cultural or scientific progress.

Islamic law is a theocratic system in which nothing but Islamic
teachings is to be followed. And clearly, classical Islam has clearly
had a longer-lasting, more powerful effect on the region than any other
religion. A short while ago, the most prominent leader of the Muslim
Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, admitted that the "killing of apostates is essential for Islam to survive," or Islam would not have lasted.

In 2006, for instance, Rafiq Tagi, a Azerbaijani writer and
journalist, was arrested after publishing an article entitled "Europe
and Us," in which he argued that Europe's humanist and universal values
would benefit Azerbaijan more than Islamic values.

Ten days after the article was published, an Iranian cleric issued a fatwa
calling for his death. In 2007 he was sentenced to three years in
prison. Released on a presidential pardon in December 2007, he was stabbed six times in downtown Baku by an unknown assailant, and died in a hospital four days later.

Members of a culture that murders intellectuals who try to present
ideas to improve their societies do not have the moral right to blame
their backwardness and bloodthirsty culture on the West -- but they
continually do. They blame, for instance, the recent crisis in the
region on "the U.S. invasion of Iraq."

The U.S. has intervened in Latin American countries, as in the coups
d'état in Brazil in 1964, and in Chile in 1973, but how many people from
those countries blew up American targets in retaliation? None. Because,
unlike Islam, their religion does not call for jihad, global caliphate,
world domination and death to apostates. The U.S. also intervened in
Vietnam, but once the U.S. left, the Vietnamese did not begin a civil
war. Neither did the Koreans.

Religions obviously have major influences on societies; the religions
of, say, Christianity and Buddhism are (usually) more peaceful and
humanitarian than Islam. In terms of promoting violence, Islam is by far
the most violent and discriminatory. We are talking about different
galaxies here.

Unlike Latin America or Asia, there has been unending religious
violence and murders in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other Muslim
countries. Those places, however, were already violent and repressive
even before the U.S. intervention. The people or administrations of
those countries could have cooperated with the U.S. governments to
promote liberal democracies and common interests; instead they became
suffocated in a cycle of violence and unending violations of human
rights -- as they have done for centuries.

Muslim regimes or groups do not need any kind of foreign intervention
to resort to violence and human rights abuses. Their history and
culture seem to give them enough incentive to commit those crimes daily.

The political history of Muslim states -- including Turkey -- has
often been restricted to two options: They have been ruled by either
nationalist ("secular") oppressive regimes, or Islamist oppressive
regimes. The third option, appearing now, is an extremist genocidal
group called the Islamic State (ISIS).

In truth, neither the former "secular" nor the Islamist regimes of
Muslims were much different from ISIS. The "secular" Iraqi dictator
Saddam Hussein, for instance, gassed the Kurds of Halabja in 1988, murdering or wounding thousands of people. We have been seeing similar scenes
of slaughter in Syria from President Bashar al-Assad's "secular"
regime. And the "secular" governments of Turkey have murdered tens of
thousands of Kurds, and persecuted Christians, Alevis and Jews.

What makes ISIS different from other Islamist or secular Muslim
governments of the Middle East is that, while other regimes try to hide
their crimes, ISIS films the crimes it commits and publishes them on the
internet.

As these wars in the Middle East escalate, people in the region try to flee elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the rich Arab nations -- including Qatar, United Arab
Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain -- do nothing to help
their Muslim brethren.
These states are wealthy, as well as geographically and culturally
close to the stricken war zones, but they have not offered any financial
help, resettlement places, or to take in any refugees.

"We know that Iran is pro-Assad, but why hasn't any
"kind-hearted" anti-Assad Arab state (e.g. Saudi) taken any Syrian
refugees?"
"Shouldn't countries that spent billions on arming militants
(including terrorists) in the name of "liberating" Syrians take refugees
in?"
"The only Syrian refugees that got attention in the Gulf states are
the vulnerable underage girls they bought in the name of marriage."

The BBC, as well, reported
that, "There is a widespread perception that many Gulf states have
unwritten restrictions in place that make it hard for Syrians to be
granted a visa in practice." Oh, really? Wouldn't it be interesting to
know what these "unwritten restrictions" are.

These wealthy states are also not exactly innocent when it comes to the killings and persecution in Syria. They have invested in the Syrian conflicts, and provided financial help for Islamist terrorist groups fighting against the Assad regime.

Given the cultural, linguistic and religious background of the
refugees, however, it would seem that many of them could live with their
fellow Muslims in those Arab states. Saudi Arabia reportedly has 100,000 air conditioned tents set up that stand empty most of the year, which could house three million people.

Saudi
Arabia reportedly has 100,000 air conditioned tents set up that stand
empty most of the year, which could house three million people. (Image
source: Akram Abahre)

Even though big media corporations in the West tend to abstain from
covering the problems caused by Muslim immigrants and refugees in the
West, it has been unfortunate that some Muslim immigrants rape women in Europe; try to establish parallel sharia systems in their own neighborhoods; demand justice in their own sharia courts; take advantage of the social welfare system
instead of seeking work, and occasionally even murder the very people
who opened the doors of their countries to them and offered them a
privileged life that they could have never had in their own home
countries in the Muslim world.

When an illegal alien, for instance, stabbed two Swedes to death last month, the prominent Swedish journalist, Ingrid Carlqvist, wrote:

"Questions flooded the social media. Who are these people
that are let into Sweden? How many of them are not innocent victims of
war, but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the
refugees? And should we pay billions in taxes to support and shelter
citizens of other countries, while some of them try to kill us?"

The same questions are valid for the new refugees at the borders of
European countries: How many of them are not innocent victims of war,
but in fact war criminals and other criminals, hiding among the
refugees?

European governments need to protect the security of their citizens
as well as their cultural identity and freedoms. The Dutch
parliamentarian Geert Wilders has suggested that people who have a
passport from an Islamic country, in addition to a Dutch passport,
should sign an anti-sharia declaration. It should state that they do not
want to introduce sharia (Islamic law) into the Netherlands, and that
they repudiate all the violent passages in the Koran.

"If they do not do that," said Wilders,
"then as far as I'm concerned there is no place for them in the
Netherlands... We can't have hundreds of thousands of people in the
Netherlands who want to introduce the Sharia. You have to accept Dutch
democracy and renounce the Sharia. I want them to come out and publicly
declare that."

New refugee-candidates might also sign such a declaration. If they
support Islamic rule, then Europe is probably not the best place for
them. And if they commit crimes -- such as rape, murder or attempting to
establish Sharia rule -- they should be instantly deported.

These stipulations are not "discrimination against Muslims," any more
than requiring guests to your home to behave politely is discrimination
against friends. This is merely the same way that rulers in the Middle
East -- the Saudis, and Emiratis, for example -- regard foreigners and
visitors. The proposal is a rational and legitimate way to protect
European civilization and the lives and liberties of all of its
citizens.

Why should Europe be expected to commit suicide and turn into yet
another Muslim land where lives and liberties have no value? How many
more "Charlie Hebdos" is Europe supposed to experience to prove that its suicidal "multicultural tolerance" is suicidal over and over again?

Europe needs to protect itself and its liberties unapologetically.
The ancestors of Europeans paid an extremely high price over many years
to give their descendants what they have today.
Moreover, Muslims should not try to turn Europe, which is being so
generous to them, into more Muslim lands. We already have far too much
barbarity, misogyny and persecution in the Muslim world.

Muslims could do our people an enormous service if instead they tried
harder to turn the Muslim lands into Europe-like place -- as Kurds have
been trying to do.

Today, Kurds are the only Muslim nation that is seriously fighting
political Islam -- with their lives. The Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) in Iraq has been trying to protect religious minorities. Thousands
of Christian families have fled violence and threats in other parts of
Iraq and found refuge in the Kurdistan Region. In the KRG there are a
large number of Christians of different denominations, as well as tens
of thousands of Yazidis.[1]

If there were an independent Kurdistan, the Kurds would be able to
make the region even better. Kurds in four parts of Kurdistan -- through
their struggle against ISIS and other Islamist groups -- have proven
that their resistance would bring liberty not only to Kurds, but also to
other persecuted minorities in the region.

But as the Kurds have been mostly left alone in their fight against
Islamist tyranny, many, in both Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, are trying
to flee elsewhere, as refugees. If Kurds had a safe and independent
state of their own, they would not have to search for other places to
run when attacked by genocidal groups or regimes.

The West should support Kurdistan in its struggle for independence.
Such support would be one of the most important steps not only to
liberate a progressive and heroic nation, but also to help reduce the
refugee tragedy in the region.

The main offenders for the current refugee crises in the world are
the Muslim regimes and masses that have done little to save their lands
from Islamic violence and tyranny.

No matter where Muslims go, it is Muslims themselves that will have
to struggle and change their societies for the better. As history
indicates, such a venture will require much hard work, re-thinking and
self-criticism. If the Azerbaijani journalist Rafiq Tagi had been
allowed to live, he might have provided wonderful insights as to what
Muslims could do to stop the persecution in the Muslim world, to promote
science, and to help create better lives for all Muslims in the region.

Uzay Bulut, born and raised a Muslim, is a Turkish journalist based in Ankara.

[1] In December 2014, Kurdish President Massoud Barzani called on Iraqi Christian victims
of ISIS "not to leave Iraq": "The enemies of humanity, peace and
coexistence do not want you to stay in this country," he said. "My dear
brothers and sisters, please do not think of leaving this country. Your
hope must be high. Staying in Iraq will break the goals of the
terrorists." For further reading about religion in Kurdistan, see the
book "Kurdistan Land of God," by Francois-Xavier Lovat.

This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.